Key Takeaways
- Gamers always find ways to run games on bizarre devices — from ATMs to pregnancy testers.
- Playing Doom on printers, Porsche 911s, or iPods is child’s play — try keyboard keys, calculators, and thermostats.
- Even digital cameras, microwaves, and treadmills aren’t safe from unhinged gamers.
- You can even “play” Skyrim on Alexa.
Gamers are a weird bunch. When we aren’t playing, we’re daydreaming about getting back to our gaming PC, console, or handheld to get lost in gaming oblivion. But the craziest ones don’t stop there — they relentlessly hunt for the most bizarre things to run games on. These are devices you’d typically never utter in the same sentence as the word gaming.
But as we’ve seen time and again, if it can be done, someone will eventually find a way to do it. Never mind asking whether it “should” be done. Seeing the items these devoted and unhinged gamers have used to play games will likely make you take a step back and think — why?
14 Porsche 911: Immersion Pro Max
The way it’s meant to be played
Kicking things off with one of the simpler DIY projects, you’d actually be surprised at the ease with which YouTuver vexal was able to make this work. Apparently, all he needed was his Porsche 911, a copy of the original Doom, and a USB flash drive to start the car’s system in debugging mode. After that, all that was left was moving left and right in the game using his steering wheel and actually driving around in order to move forward in the game. Easy, right?
Well, you’ll need to find a locality with the exact same layout as that of Doom’s levels to really make this work. But, just getting this to run on your Porsche 911 or any other car is cool enough.
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13 ATM: Automated Torturing Machine
What else would you do with that big screen?
This one again has to do with Doom. What can I say? People love to run this genre archetype on absolutely anything. These guys managed to hook up an ATM to run the beloved shooter and even used the $10, $20 side buttons to switch weapons. By the standards of this list, the ATM screen is legitimately massive, so someone had to do this sooner rather than later.
12 Printer: Print mayhem
A printer doing something useful for once
This was actually part of a research project showcasing printer security exploits where a team forced modded firmware on a Canon printer and ran — you guessed it — Doom on it. It used to be possible to do this on wireless printers and run any software on them. But, if you’re thinking of replicating this today, you might have a hard time finding a model that still “supports” these shenanigans.
The great thing is that the printer would have gotten a good day’s work, unlike its daily routine of complaining due to empty ink cartridges or paper jams.
11 Camera: First-person shooter
After all, it’s a Nikon ‘Cool’pix
There’s this YouTube channel called “Can It Skyrim?” that runs old games on the wackiest of devices — smartwatches, car stereos, a Gameboy Advance, and more. In a very special video, they managed to run or at least stream Skyrim on a Nikon Coolpix camera. The game was actually running on a PC and through some complicated wizardry, and then streamed to the camera. Using such a big part of many of our childhoods to run a beloved game was a treat to watch.
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10 Alexa: Play Skyrim
Bethesda embraced the meme
Bethesda has released Skyrim a lot, and I mean a whole lot of times, to the point where players grew fed up. Eventually, Bethesda released the game yet again, but this time for Amazon Alexa. Yes, you can actually engage in a Skyrim session by talking to your Alexa. It’ll describe the situation you’re in along with your health and other stats, and you need to respond with what you want to do — like a D&D game.
9 iPod Nano: Can it run Doom?
Yes, the answer is always yes
If an ATM, Nikon camera, and printer weren’t enough for you, someone ran Doom on a lowly iPod Nano. This Instructables guide shows you exactly how to do it — just change a few settings, install a custom firmware, install Doom, and you’re off to the races. The surprising thing is that it runs pretty well on the iPod, considering the size and age of the thing. If you still have one, go give it a shot.
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8 Microwave: Let him cook
Play ’em nice and toasty
You’ve probably used a microwave thousands of times, but did you ever think of doing this? YouTuber Colin Furze, as part of his “Invention Show”, rigged a microwave with a screen in the door and some A/V ports to plug in a small retro console. He had to add a bit of heft to the microwave door to make it work, but overall, came up with a neat way to kill some time while reheating yesterday’s pizza. After all, a gamer needs his fuel. Or you could say a chef needs his gaming fix. Either of those is a stretch in this situation, though.
7 Calculator: Too easy to pass up
Your anti–super computer
Every computer is a calculator, after all. But what if you wanted to play games on an actual graphics calculator? That’s also been done — a Texas Instruments TI-83 graphics calculator can be used to run tons of games such as Super Mario, Tetris, Fruit Ninja, Castlevaniaand Minesweeper. YouTubers like Chief Dylan Programming have shown how you can use Texas Instruments’ own TI Connect software and install the required OS and game to get things up and running.
6 Keyboard key: If it displays, I plays
Keys with screens isn’t what’s weird here
Keeping traditions intact is important. In that vein, someone used an Optimus Maximus keyboard — featuring a programmable screen on every key — and ran Doom 2 on a single key. What was intended to display letters and symbols was used to “play” an FPS at a generous 48 x 48 resolution. This is getting pretty silly at this point, but there’s more to come. There’s always more.
5 Thermostat: It’s heating up now
Pretty cool, and hot?
Out of all the things on this list, a thermostat is probably something you interact with the least, which obviously makes it the perfect target for a Doom invasion. YouTuber cz7asm showed how you can play the game on a Honeywell Prestige thermostat that contains an ARM9 series processor. By hooking up an old-school controller to the thermostat, you can kill hours killing demons under the pretext of “adjusting the heat”.
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4 Treadmill: Walk the talk
Perfect for a certain walking simulator
A treadmill is where you’ll find yourself on those rare days when you’ve stepped out of your house to finally use your gym membership. You could start a superficial workout and head home, or you could choose to take your PlayStation along for the ride and partake in some immersive gaming. That’s what YouTuber Allen Pan did with his PlayStation 4 and a treadmill, so he could play Death Stranding with the treadmill as the controller. Who said gaming wasn’t healthy?
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3 Oscilloscope: Yeah science!
Making waves, taking names
An oscilloscope is something you might have used in your high school science lab. You know, the thing that was used to measure electronic signals and….never mind, you don’t remember it. The point is, YouTubers rpocc and pekkavaa managed to use one to play Quake. The laptop running the game sent audio waves to the oscilloscope, which then displayed the game on its screen. The lengths people would go to just to skip studying or working!
2 Pregnancy Test: A boy? A girl? A demon
The best contraceptive ever
It’s Doom again. And this time on a pregnancy test — kind of. While nothing should surprise you at this point, a pregnancy test is pushing it too far, right? A programmer made some pretty major modifications to a pregnancy test, namely the processor and display, and then played Doom on it. Granted, replacing the internals is sort of like cheating, but you got to give it to the guy.
1 Soldering Iron: Because why not?
We’ve officially gone too far
I was wrong about the pregnancy test. This is pushing it too far — running Tetris on a TS100 soldering iron is the stuff of nightmares. Let’s skip past the how and get straight to the why. Why would someone want to run Tetris on a 5.5mm by 2.5mm display? On top of that, the thing heats up after every loss, so it’s also the riskiest game of block-stacking ever. Maybe it’s the thrill of it or the pursuit of setting a new record. Whatever it is, it deserves your attention.
Go weird or go home
That seems to be the mantra behind each of these weird projects. The obsession with playing games on unconventional devices takes one to some very dark places. If you’re planning to follow in the footsteps of these pioneers, make sure you have an anchor tying you to daily life. Otherwise, this rabbit hole could swallow you whole. For those wanting to play safe, the best retro gaming handhelds are great for finding your next favorite device. Or you could turn a Raspberry Pi into a retro PC and leave the weirdness to the experts.